HNC Photography, IFC - Coursework, Introduction to Film Culture Blog, Part two - Love and Lust, Project 3 - A star is born
Marcello Mastroianni (1924 to 1996)
“For the sake of gaining a better scope or understanding on the subject, I ask of the reader a simple exercise. Close your eyes for a moment and try and visualise, who, in your mind is an iconic ambassador of style. Now, with whomever, that image may embody, allow me to explain why they most probably borrowed influence in some way or another from the sophisticated debonair of ʻthe Latin loverʼ, Marcello Mastroianni.”
The star of over 120 films, Marcello Mastroianni, was the catalyst of how we have developed our thought on European style and sophistication. He collected a string of cinematic awards including one of only two people to win the best actor award at Cannes twice.
In Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita – he plays the playboy tabloid reporter on the streets of Rome, with such ear and debonair style that you instantly believe that he is that character. You cannot imagine any other actor European, British or American being able to carry off that performance with such credulity.
He is perfectly matched alongside Anita Ekberg, although her performance is is a little light, the fact that she playing the embodiment of femininity (in the eye of Fellini) only give further strength Mastroianni’s growing persona. Strangely he was hired for the part in La Dolce Vita because “he had a terribly ordinary face”.
As he career continued and with the films, he starred in with Sophia Loren, he kept the playboy character but never, actually portrayed the amoral characters that we so often found in the French New Wave films of the era. When asked by a reporter why he rarely portrayed mobsters in his films Mastroianni answered with a wink, “I’m a lover, not a fighter.” He more than lived up to that reputation.
Marcello Mastroianni’s off a screen and on screen persona we hard to distinguish apart, when he died by his side was long time lover Catherine Deneuve and the daughter, although he had been married to his wife since 1948. On screen or not Mastroianni embodied Italian style.